WARMENHOVEN & VENDERBOS Blog » Monumentaal

Anish Kapoor | Monumenta 2011 | Leviathan

W&V — Tue, 14 Jun 2011 11:30:50 +0000

Each year Monumenta invites an internationally renowned artist to turn their vision to the vast Nave of Paris’ Grand Palais and to create a new artwork especially for this space. The first challenge was met by German artist Anselm Kiefer followed by American artist Richard Serra in 2008 and French artist Christian Boltanski in 2010. For its fourth incarnation, the French Ministry for Culture and Communication has invited Anish Kapoor to produce a new work for the Nave’s monumental space.

The artist describes the work he is creating for Monumenta as follows: “A single object, a single form, a single colour.” “My ambition”, he adds, “is to create a space within a space that responds to the height and luminosity of the Nave at the Grand Palais. Visitors are invited to walk inside the work, to immerse themselves in colour, and it will, I hope, be a contemplative and poetic experience.”

The work is not merely speaking visually, but it leads the visitor on a journey of total sensorial and mental discovery. It questions what we think we know about art, our body, our most intimate experiences and our origins.

leviathan by Anish Kapoor will be on display untill 23rd June 2011 at the Grand Palais, Paris, France.

Photos top 1 to 5 by: Designboom | Photos bottom 6 to 7 by: Anish Kapoor, Didier Plowy and Monumenta |

Spencer Tunick major installations

W&V — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 06:38:27 +0000

The monumental installations created by ,the New York based artist, Spencer Tunick are an inspiring and interesting dialogue between the naked human body and the public spaces they are placed in. But, at the same time, they are also a dialogue between the individual human and the larger group. By taking pictures of hundreds and sometimes thousands of naked bodies at specific locations he transforms human individuals to sculptural objects. By doing this he shows and opens a new point of view or perception of humans, nature and architecture.

In his early work he focussed more on individual nude bodies or small groups. This made these works more intimate compared to the massive installations for which he is now known. His work can be considered as a crossover between an installation and a performance.

Spencer Tunick:
“A body is a living entity. It represents life, freedom, sensuality, and it is a mechanism to carry out our thoughts. A body is always beautiful to me. It depends on the individual work and what I do with it and what kind of idea lies behind it — if age matters or not. But in my group works, the only difference is how far people can go if it rains, snows etc.”

On March 1st, 2010 he created his latest work. Tunick set up a series of installations titled “The Base” on the Sydney Opera House Forecourt and inside the Opera House. These installations were carried out as part of the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras and were Tunick’s first large-scale installation in Sydney, with over 5,200 participants.

In the below video by Ralph Goertz, Spencer Tunick was followed by the Institut für Kunstdokumentation und Szenografie during the creation of his installation at the Museum Kunst Palast, Düsseldorf in 2006.

Photos top Spencer Tunick | Photo centre Reuters | Photo bottom Wood/Getty | Video by Ralph Goertz, Institut für Kunstdokumentation und Szenografie

Frederic Geurts architectural, monumental, dialogue and balance

W&V — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 16:01:37 +0000

The work of the Belgian artist Frederic Geurts consists of monumental, but very fragile architectural structures, in which the artist goes to the extreme in exploring the boundaries of the force of gravity and the materiality of the structures.

Frederic Geurts: “I cannot act in a vacuum. I need context. I would like to play and interact with the environment. Both the spatial architectural aspects as well as the meaning of a place are important. In that sense, I am more a designer. Like for example an architect who starts creating after he has received a package of demands given by his client. I create such a demands program for myself.”

In the below, Dutch spoken, video Frederic Geurts gives a few days before the opening of his most recent exhibition called (un)balanced a tour to Jan Boelen the artistic director of the Z33 art centre.

Photos: Frederic Geurts (un)balanced |